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> One definition or property of consciousness I find interesting is that it encompasses “what it is like to be <entity>”. If there is something that it is like

> One definition or property of consciousness I find interesting is that it encompasses “what it is like to be <entity>”. If there is something that it is like to be <animal>, it is conscious. I think there are problems with this. Take something like the roundworm, with 300 neurons. It has senses, and I assume a base level consciousness to process those senses. It would be something to be like a roundworm. On the other hand, a roundworm likely has no sense of self, no identity, no awareness..no mental self to be able to acknowledge and reflect on those experience, so there is no 'someone'. And isn't that the point that matters?

grantcas 3y ago
It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with primary consciousness will probably have to come first. What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing. I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order. My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461 https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  Wow, this is super interesting, I have not heard of this at all before. Thanks for sharing!
anonymouskimmer 3y ago
> On the other hand, a roundworm likely has no sense of self, no identity, no awareness..no mental self to be able to acknowledge and reflect on those experience, so there is no 'someone'. And isn't that the point that matters? We can always point to something we have that other organisms don't have and ask whether that is the point that matters. We can hypothesize things that probably don't exist and say that those things are what matters (e.g. the posited purpose of reincarnation, if such a thing existed). Re: roundworm 1) sense of self -> it has to have a sense of proprioception, of embodiedment, in order to properly respond to its sensory information. 2) identity -> humans with global amnesia would lack a memory of identity. 3) a roundworm is sensorily aware, and, if it has a sense of proprioception, bodily aware of it's own actions and environmental responses to its actions. 4) It probably isn't self-reflective, but is this necessary in humans?
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  > We can always point to something we have that other organisms don't have and ask whether that is the point that matters. Sure. In this case it's introspective self-awareness, and I would say it matters very much. > sense of self -> it has to have a sense of proprioception, of embodiedment, in order to properly respond to its sensory information. Sure, it has bodily self-awareness. It has enough awareness to react to something its body detects. ut not enough of a mind to reflect on or appreciate on an experience. There is no 'someone'. It's automata. > identity -> humans with global amnesia would lack a memory of identity. Sure, but we don't use outliers to establish baselines. > It probably isn't self-reflective, but is this necessary in humans? For establishing a baseline? Absolutely.
  - haswell 3y ago
    I think it’s tempting to set some threshold like “it must be self reflective”, but that raises a different question: why is this important vs. some other threshold? e.g. does it matter if self reflection is possible if it is possible for the organism to experience pain? I think the answer lies in what we’re trying to understand and why we’re trying to understand it. If the threshold is applied for the purpose of understanding when an organism or machine has reached some level of human-ness, purely for the purpose of some kind of benchmark, self reflection is an interesting bar to reach. But usually these questions are aimed at finding some moral direction about how we should treat these entities. We have strong intuitions that abusing animals is morally wrong even if animals cannot self reflect. When thinking about a future AI, I think we have to consider the possibility that self reflection is not a necessary bar to reach before we have some uncomfortable moral questions to answer. Put another way, I suspect there will be many milestones that are meaningful and interesting, each introducing a new set of questions and implications. And I think some of the early milestones carry implications that are worth caring about long before self awareness is reached.

grantcas 3y ago

It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with primary consciousness will probably have to come first. What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing. I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order. My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461 https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461

PrimeMcFly 3y ago
Wow, this is super interesting, I have not heard of this at all before. Thanks for sharing!

anonymouskimmer 3y ago

> On the other hand, a roundworm likely has no sense of self, no identity, no awareness..no mental self to be able to acknowledge and reflect on those experience, so there is no 'someone'. And isn't that the point that matters? We can always point to something we have that other organisms don't have and ask whether that is the point that matters. We can hypothesize things that probably don't exist and say that those things are what matters (e.g. the posited purpose of reincarnation, if such a thing existed). Re: roundworm 1) sense of self -> it has to have a sense of proprioception, of embodiedment, in order to properly respond to its sensory information. 2) identity -> humans with global amnesia would lack a memory of identity. 3) a roundworm is sensorily aware, and, if it has a sense of proprioception, bodily aware of it's own actions and environmental responses to its actions. 4) It probably isn't self-reflective, but is this necessary in humans?

PrimeMcFly 3y ago
> We can always point to something we have that other organisms don't have and ask whether that is the point that matters. Sure. In this case it's introspective self-awareness, and I would say it matters very much. > sense of self -> it has to have a sense of proprioception, of embodiedment, in order to properly respond to its sensory information. Sure, it has bodily self-awareness. It has enough awareness to react to something its body detects. ut not enough of a mind to reflect on or appreciate on an experience. There is no 'someone'. It's automata. > identity -> humans with global amnesia would lack a memory of identity. Sure, but we don't use outliers to establish baselines. > It probably isn't self-reflective, but is this necessary in humans? For establishing a baseline? Absolutely.
- haswell 3y ago
  I think it’s tempting to set some threshold like “it must be self reflective”, but that raises a different question: why is this important vs. some other threshold? e.g. does it matter if self reflection is possible if it is possible for the organism to experience pain? I think the answer lies in what we’re trying to understand and why we’re trying to understand it. If the threshold is applied for the purpose of understanding when an organism or machine has reached some level of human-ness, purely for the purpose of some kind of benchmark, self reflection is an interesting bar to reach. But usually these questions are aimed at finding some moral direction about how we should treat these entities. We have strong intuitions that abusing animals is morally wrong even if animals cannot self reflect. When thinking about a future AI, I think we have to consider the possibility that self reflection is not a necessary bar to reach before we have some uncomfortable moral questions to answer. Put another way, I suspect there will be many milestones that are meaningful and interesting, each introducing a new set of questions and implications. And I think some of the early milestones carry implications that are worth caring about long before self awareness is reached.